THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN ESSEX. 167
At each of the places mentioned as lying on the foregoing roads,
remains of the Roman occupation have been found. Colchester
undoubtedly was one of if not the chief Roman town in East Anglia,
and the remains of the wall with which the ancient town was
surrounded and defended gives us an excellent example of the
Roman mode of building. Finding no stone in the county but an
abundance of clay, they set to work to manufacture a substitute for
stone and well they succeeded, for the hardness and durability of a
Roman brick is proverbial; but probably they found that the manu-
facture of bricks with which to carry up the whole building would
involve not only a great expense but very considerable delay. They
therefore utilised material which was ready to hand and required no
manufacturing process. I refer to the pebbles and flints which are
found throughout the county, and to the small hard calcareous
boulders found in the clay, and also on parts of the coast, especially
at Harwich, which they called Septaria. The mode of construction
of their walls was as follows : having carried up the foundations for
three or four feet in rubble work, that is, with pebbles and flints and
Septaria mixed with mortar composed of good lime and sand, with a
certain admixture of ground bricks or burnt clay, they bedded there-
on two or three courses of their bricks, which were about half the
thickness of the bricks of the present day ; they then carried up the
next three or four feet with rubble work as before described, and then
repeated the courses of bricks, followed again by rubble work and
bands of bricks until the wall was completed. This was the mode of
construction adopted in the Colchester wall, and similar construction
was adopted in building the walls enclosing the great camp at
Bradwell-juxta-Mare ; also in the walls of the Roman villa at Chelms-
ford, in the south-west wall of the nave of Broomfield Church,
which I believe to be a fragment of a Roman building, and I think
I may venture to say that this mode of construction is found in all
buildings in this county which can be verified as of the Roman
period, and it therefore becomes practically a test of Roman work.
From the numerous remains of undoubted Roman pottery and other
matters, which have been found from time to time throughout the
county, and especially at Colchester, indicating a very considerable
population, it has been to many a matter of surprise that there are
so few Roman buildings left to us ; but it must be remembered that
the habits and religion of their successors was so different, that
certainly no Roman temple would stand a chance of existence when